The Pioneers (27 page)

“Ugly!” echoed the major-domo, opening eyes, that were beginning to close in a very suspicious sleepiness, in wide amazement. “By the Lord Harry, woman, I should as soon think of calling the Boadishey a clumsy frigate. What the devil would you have? Arn't her eyes as bright as the morning and evening stars? And isn't her hair as black and glistening as rigging that has just had a lick of tar? Doesn't she move as stately as a first rate in smooth water, on a bowline? Why, woman, the figurehead of the Boadishey was a fool to her, and that, as I've often heard the captain say, was an image of a great queen; and arn't queens always comely, woman? For who do you think would be a king, and not choose a handsome bedfellow?”

“Talk decent, Benjamin,” said the housekeeper, “or I won't keep your company. I don't gainsay her being comely to look on, but I will maintain that she's likely to show poor conduct. She seems to think herself too good to talk to a body. From what Squire Jones had tell'd me, I some expected to be quite captivated by her company. Now, to my reckoning, Lowizy Grant is much more pritty behaved than Betsey Temple. She wouldn't so much as hold discourse with me, when I wanted to ask her how she felt on coming home and missing her mammy.”

“Perhaps she didn't understand you, woman; you are none of the best linguister; and then Miss Lizzy has been exercising the king's English under a great Lon'on lady, and, for that matter, can talk the language almost as well as myself, or any native-born British subject. You've forgot your schooling, and the young mistress is a great scollard.”

“Mistress!” cried Remarkable. “Don't make one out to be a nigger, Benjamin. She's no mistress of mine and never will be. And as to speech, I hold myself as second to nobody out of New England. I was born and raised in Essex county; and I've always heer'n say that the Bay State was provarbal for pronounsation!”

“I've often heard of that Bay of State,” said Benjamin, “but can't say that I've ever been in it, nor do I know exactly whereaway it is that it lays; but I suppose there is good anchorage in it, and that it's no bad place for the taking of ling; but for size, it can't be so much as a yawl to a sloop of war, compared with the Bay of Biscay, or, mayhap, Torbay. And as for language, if you want to hear the dictionary overhauled, like a long line in a blow, you must go to Wapping, and listen to the Lon'oners, as they deal out their lingo. Howsomever, I see no such mighty matter that Miss Lizzy has been doing to you, good woman, so take another drop of your brew, and forgive and forget, like an honest soul.”

“No, indeed! And I shan't do sitch a thing, Benjamin. This treatment is a newity to me, and what I won't put up with. I have a hundred and fifty dollars at use, besides a bed and twenty sheep, to good; and I don't crave to live in a house where a body mustn't call a young woman by her given name to her face. I
will
call her Betsey as much as I please: it's a free country, and no one can stop me. I did intend to stop while summer, but I shall quit tomorrow morning; and I will talk just as I please.”

“For that matter, Mistress Remarkable,” said Benjamin, “there's none here who will contradict you; for I'm of opinion that it would be as easy to stop a hurricane with a Barcelony handkerchy, as to bring up your tongue when the stopper is off. I say, good woman, do they grow many monkeys along the shores of that Bay of State?”

“You're a monkey yourself, Mr. Penguillan,” cried the enraged housekeeper, “or a bear! A black, beastly bear! And an't fit for a decent woman to stay with. I'll never keep your company again, sir, if I should live thirty years with the Judge. Sitch talk is more befitting the kitchen than the keeping room of a house of one who is well to do in the world.”

“Look you, Mistress Pitty—Patty—Prettybones, mayhap I'm some such matter as a bear, as they will find who come to grapple with me; but dam'me if I'm a monkey—a thing that chatters without knowing a word of what it says—a parrot, that will hold a dialogue, for what an honest man knows, in a dozen languages; mayhap in the Bay of State lingo; mayhap in Greek or High Dutch. But dost it know what it means itself? Canst answer me that, good woman? Your midshipman can sing out, and pass the word, when the captain gives the order, but just set him adrift by himself, and let him work the ship of his own head, and stop my grog, if you don't find all the Johnny Raws laughing at him.”

“Stop your grog, indeed!” said Remarkable, rising with great indignation, and seizing a candle; “You're groggy now, Benjamin, and I'll quit the room before I hear any misbecoming words from you.”

The housekeeper retired, with a manner but little less dignified, as she thought, than the air of the heiress, muttering, as she drew the door after her, with a noise like the report of a musket, the opprobrious terms of “drunkard,” “sot,” and “beast.”

“Who's that you say is drunk?” cried Benjamin, fiercely, rising and making a movement towards Remarkable. “You talk of mustering yourself with a lady! You're just fit to grumble and find fault. Where the devil should you larn behavior and dictionary? In your damned Bay of State, ha?”

Benjamin here fell back in his chair, and soon gave vent to certain ominous sounds, which resembled not a little the growling of his favorite animal, the bear itself. Before, however, he was quite locked—to use the language that would suit the Della-Cruscan humor of certain refined minds of the present day—“in the arms of Morpheus,” he spoke aloud, observing due pauses between his epithets, the impressive terms of “monkey,” “parrot,” “picnic,” “tarpot,” and “linguisters.”

We shall not attempt to explain his meaning, nor connect his sentences; and our readers must be satisfied with our informing them that they were expressed with all that coolness of contempt that a man might well be supposed to feel for a monkey.

Nearly two hours passed in this sleep before the major-domo was awakened by the noisy entrance of Richard, Major Hartmann, and the master of the mansion. Benjamin so far rallied his confused faculties, as to shape the course of the two former to their respective apartments, when he disappeared himself, leaving the task of securing the house to him who was most interested in its safety. Locks and bars were but little attended to in the early day of that settlement; and so soon as Marmaduke had given an eye to the enormous fires of his dwelling, he retired. With this act of prudence closes the first night of our tale.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

 

IT was fortunate for more than one of the bacchanalians who left the “Bold Dragoon” late in the evening, that the severe cold of the season was becoming rapidly less dangerous, as they threaded the different mazes through the snowbanks that led to their respective dwellings. Thin, driving clouds began towards morning to flit across the heavens, and the moon set behind a volume of vapor that was impelled furiously towards the north, carrying with it the softer atmosphere from the distant ocean. The rising sun was obscured by denser and increasing columns of clouds, while the southerly wind that rushed up the valley, brought the never-failing symptoms of a thaw.

It was quite late in the morning before Elizabeth, observing the faint glow which appeared on the eastern mountain, long after the light of the sun had struck the opposite hills, ventured from the house, with a view to gratify her curiosity with a glance by daylight at the surrounding objects, before the tardy revelers of the Christmas Eve should make their appearance at the breakfast table. While she was drawing the folds of her pelisse more closely around her form, to guard against a cold that was yet great, though rapidly yielding, in the small enclosure that opened in the rear of the house on a little thicket of low pines, that were springing up where trees of a mightier growth had lately stood, she was surprised at the voice of Mr. Jones.

“Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas to you, cousin Bess,” he shouted. “Ah, ha! an early riser, I see; but I knew I should steal a march on you. I never was in a house yet, where I didn't get the first Christmas greeting on every soul in it, man, woman, and child; great and small; black, white, and yellow. But stop a minute, till I can just slip on my coat; you are about to look at the improvements, I see, which no one can explain so well as I, who planned them all. It will be an hour before 'duke and the Major can sleep off Mrs. Hollister's confounded distillations, and so I'll come down and go with you.”

Elizabeth turned, and observed her cousin in his nightcap, with his head out of his bedroom window, where his zeal for pre-eminence, in defiance of the weather, had impelled him to thrust it. She laughed, and promising to wait for his company, re-entered the house, making her appearance again, holding in her hand a packet that was secured by several large and important seals, just in time to meet the gentleman.

“Come, Bessy, come,” he cried, drawing one of her arms through his own; “the snow begins to give, but it will bear us yet. Don't you snuff old Pennsylvania in the very air? This is a vile climate, girl; now at sunset, last evening, it was cold enough to freeze a man's zeal, and that, I can tell you, takes a thermometer near zero for me; then about nine or ten it began to moderate; at twelve it was quite mild, and here all the rest of the night I have been so hot, as not to bear a blanket on the bed.—Holla! Aggy—Merry Christmas, Aggy—I say, do you hear me, you black dog! there's a dollar for you; and if the gentlemen get up before I come back, do you come out and let me know. I wouldn't have 'duke get the start of me for the worth of your head.”

The black caught the money from the snow, and promising a due degree of watchfulness, he gave the dollar a whirl of twenty feet in the air, and catching it as it fell, in the palm of his hand, he withdrew to the kitchen, to exhibit his present, with a heart as light as his face was happy in his expression.

“Oh, rest easy, my dear coz,” said the young lady; “I took a look in at my father, who is likely to sleep an hour; and, by using due vigilance, you will secure all the honors of the season.”

“Why, 'duke is your father, Elizabeth; but 'duke is a man who likes to be foremost, even in trifles. Now, as for myself, I care for no such things, except in the way of competition; for a thing which is of no moment in itself may be made of importance in the way of competition. So it is with your father—he loves to be first; but I only struggle with him as a competitor.”

“It's all very clear, sir,” said Elizabeth; “you would not care a fig for distinction if there were no one in the world but yourself; but as there happen to be a great many others, why you must struggle with them all—in the way of competition.”

“Exactly so; I see you are a clever girl, Bess, and one who does credit to her masters. It was my plan to send you to that school; for when your father first mentioned the thing, I wrote a private letter for advice to a judicious friend in the city, who recommended the very school you went to. 'Duke was a little obstinate at first, as usual, but when he heard the truth, he was obliged to send you.”

“Well, a truce to 'duke's foibles, sir; he is my father; and if you knew what he has been doing for you while we were in Albany, you would deal more tenderly with his character.”

“For me!” cried Richard, pausing a moment in his walk to reflect. “Oh! He got the plans of the new Dutch meetinghouse for me, I suppose; but I care very little about it, for a man of a certain kind of talent is seldom aided by any foreign suggestions: his own brain is the best architect.”

“No such thing,” said Elizabeth, looking provokingly knowing.

“No! Let me see—perhaps he had my name put in the bill for the new turnpike, as a director.”

“He might possibly; but it is not to such an appointment that I allude.”

“Such an appointment!” repeated Mr. Jones, who began to fidget with curiosity; “then it is an appointment. If it is in the militia, I won't take it.”

“No, no, it is not in the militia,” cried Elizabeth, showing the packet in her hand, and then drawing it back with a coquettish air; “it is an office of both honor and emolument.”

“Honor and emolument!” echoed Richard, in painful suspense; “show me the paper, girl. Say, is it an office where there is anything to
do
?”

“You have hit it, cousin Dickon; it is the executive office of the county; at least so said my father when he gave me this packet to offer you as a Christmas box. ‘Surely if anything will please Dickon,' he said, ‘it will be to fill the executive chair of the county.' ”

“Executive chair! What nonsense!” cried the impatient gentleman, snatching the packet from her hand. “There is no such office in the county. Eh! What! It is, I declare, a commission, appointing Richard Jones, Esquire, sheriff of the county. Well, this is kind in 'duke, positively. I must say 'duke has a warm heart and never forgets his friends. Sheriff! High Sheriff of——! It sounds well, Bess, but it shall execute better. 'Duke is a judicious man, after all, and knows human nature thoroughly. I'm much obliged to him,” continued Richard, using the skirt of his coat unconsciously to wipe his eyes; “though I would do as much for him any day, as he shall see, if I have an opportunity to perform any of the duties of my office on him. It shall be done, cousin Bess—it shall be done, I say.—How this cursed south wind makes one's eyes water!”

“Now, Richard,” said the laughing maiden, “now I think you will find something to do. I have often heard you complain of old, that there was nothing to do in this new country, while to my eyes it seemed as if everything remained to be done.”

“Do!” echoed Richard, who blew his nose, raised his little form to its greatest elevation, and looked serious. “Everything depends on system, girl. I shall sit down this afternoon, and systematize the county. I must have deputies, you know. I will divide the county into districts, over which I will place my deputies; and I will have one for the village, which I will call my home department. Let me see—oh! Benjamin! Yes, Benjamin will make a good deputy; he has been naturalized, and would answer admirably, if he could only ride on horseback.”